Samuel Parris

Samuel Parris (1653-27 February 1720) was the Puritan minister of Salem, Massachusetts and a Barbados sugar plantation owner. He was the father of afflicted girl Elizabeth Parris and uncle of Abigail Williams, the two of whom played central roles in the Salem Witch Trials.

Biography
Samuel Parris was born in 1653 in London, England to a family of modest success, and in the early 1660s he came to Boston and studied at Harvard University. Parris took over the family sugar plantation in Barbados in 1673 after the death of his father, and after the 1680 hurricane, he returned to Boston with his slave Tituba. Parris became the minister of Salem, Massachusetts in July 1689, marrying Elizabeth Parris and having a family. In 1692, his daughter Betty Parris was afflicted, refusing to wake up from her sleep; this occurred shortly after he discovered Tituba and several young Salem girls (including his niece Abigail Williams) dancing around a boiling pot containing frogs. Parris believed that the girls tried to conjure some boys from the town, and that the Barbadian dance was actually Tituba having a compact with the Devil. Parris called on Reverend Samuel Hale of Beverly to assist him in waking his daughter and Ruth Putnam, who was also refusing to wake up. Parris foolishly believed his niece's accusations against random Salem residents, and it eventually became a series of accusations and hangings. Judge Thomas Danforth, Judge Samuel Sewall, and Judge John Hathorne condemned 19 people to hanging and had Giles Corey crushed to death with rocks. However, the illusion disappeared when Abigail Williams accused Samuel Hale's wife of being an associate of the Devil, and Abigail and Mercy Lewis fled to Boston with 32 pounds, leaving Parris broke. In 1696, Parris resigned as reverend, but in 1697 he headed to Boston and returned to preaching, dying in 1720 in Sudbury.